The Journal’s editorial board published a defense of Puzder on December 8, praising his opposition to raising the federal minimum wage, expanding Obamacare, and strengthening overtime protections for workers. The editorial board continued that they hoped Puzder would roll back other progressive advances for working-class Americans, including reversing an executive order mandating paid sick leave for federal contractors and undoing the Labor Department’s fiduciary rulerequiring investment brokers to act in a client's best interests. From the Journal:

Donald Trump’s selection of CKE CEO Andy Puzder to lead his Labor Department has incited a tantrum on the left, which is a good sign. The burger maven once told us that he often picked up litter around his restaurants, and departing chief Tom Perez is leaving plenty to clean up.

[...]

He is also the rare executive who promotes free markets rather than merely his narrow business interests. Mr. Puzder has expounded in these pages on the unintended consequences of ObamaCare’s mandates and a $15 minimum wage. He’s also detailed how the Obama Administration has contributed to the shrinking labor force and large number of underemployed workers.

The Journal was one of the few voices to speak in support of Puzder’s nomination for secretary of labor. During a December 9 segment on Fox Business, host Stuart Varney used the controversy surrounding the nomination as “an excuse to run those racy ads” objectifying women, which Puzder’s company has become known for.

One of the only other defenders of Puzder is Stephen Moore -- a discredited economist, Trump economic adviser, and a former Journal editorial board member -- who, while defending his boss’ pick, attacked Media Matters and “the big unions” for what he called “a loud and libelous campaign” to damage Puzder’s nomination.

Here is the record at those restaurants. When the Obama Labor Department looked at thousands of complaints involving fast-food workers, it found labor law violations in 60 percent of the investigations at Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s, usually for failure to pay the minimum wage or time and a half for overtime.

MSNBC’s Morning Joemocked Puzder on December 9 for his statement to Business Insider that machines are preferable to workers, and co-host Mika Brzezinski reported that opposition to Puzder came from both the left and from the alt-right website Breitbart News, which had been instrumental in helping Trump get elected.

Finally, as Gary Legum pointed out in a column published by Salon, if Puzder is confirmed, he may be the “least qualified labor secretary” since the early 1980s, when the Reagan administration appointed construction magnate Raymond Donovan to the same post.

Media Matters has released a media guide to the fossil fuel industry lobbyists, executives, and front groups shaping Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s energy agenda. Here are the five most outrageous statements about climate change and energy that we've seen from Trump's energy advisers so far.

Stephen Moore: Opposing Fracking “Is Like Being Against A Cure For Cancer”

During the August 1 edition of C-SPAN2's Book TV, while discussing his new book Fueling Freedom: Exposing the Mad War on Energy, Trump’s top economic adviser, Stephen Moore, stated that opposing fracking “is like being against a cure for cancer”:

Harold Hamm Points To Orlando Shooting To Claim “Every Time We Can’t Drill A Well In America, Terrorism Is Being Funded”

Trump is reportedly considering Harold Hamm, CEO of fracking giant Continental Resources, as energy secretary. During a July 20 speech supporting Trump at the 2016 Republican National Convention, Hamm exploited the June mass shooting at an Orlando, FL, nightclub to baselessly call for more drilling, saying, “Every time we can't drill a well in America, terrorism is being funded”:

Myron Ebell: "I'd Like To See A Lot More Funding" From Big Coal

Myron Ebell is reportedly running the Trump campaign’s Environmental Protection Agency transition team. During an interview on the August 5 edition of C-SPAN's Washington Journal, Environmental Defense Fund's Jeremy Symons confronted Ebell on his organization’s funding from coal company Murray Energy, and Ebell responded: “I'd like to see a lot more funding from all of those companies”:

Rep. Kevin Cramer (R-ND), one of Trump’s key energy advisers, is a vocal climate science denier. In audio uncovered by Hill Heat, Cramer alleged, “We know the global climate is cooling,” and declared that “the idea that CO2 is somehow causing global warming is on its face fraudulent”:

Mike Pence Raised The Fictitious “War On Coal” Five Times During The Vice Presidential Debate

The “war on coal” was manufactured by the GOP and the coal industry to attack Democrats during the 2012 election, and the phrase has remained popular among the coal industry's biggest advocates. But the phrase is misleading, as Associated Press reporter Vicki Smith has explained: "It's easier to call the geologic, market and environmental forces reshaping coal — cheap natural gas, harder-to-mine coal seams, slowing economies — some kind of political or cultural 'war' than to acknowledge the world is changing, and leaving some people behind."

During the vice presidential debate on October 4, Trump’s vice presidential running mate, Mike Pence, pushed the myth that the Obama administration has been waging a “war on coal” five separate times:

The fossil fuel industry has unprecedented influence on GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump’s campaign. Here is what media should know about the fossil fuel lobbyists, executives, and front groups that would determine the country’s climate and energy policies in a Trump administration.

The Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) released a report on the economic impact of New York City’s requirement that employers provide workers with paid sick leave, finding that right-wing media concerns that such ordinances would create a prohibitive cost burden were “proven unfounded.” The ordinance was a particular target of the thoroughly discredited pundit Stephen Moore, who now counts himself among Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s senior economic advisers despite a consistent track record of being dead wrong on the economy.

According to a September 6 report from CEPR, fears that New York’s paid sick leave mandate would be “a major cost burden on employers” that could “invite widespread abuse by employees” have “proven unfounded.” The report surveyed 352 randomly selected businesses from October 2015 to March 2016 and found 97 percent of businesses had not reduced worker hours, 94 percent had not raised prices, and 91 percent had not reduced hiring activity as a result of the city’s paid sick leave mandate. The report also found that 96 percent of businesses reported no changes in customer service, and 94 percent reported no changes in productivity as a result of the law, which CEPR described as “a ‘non-event’ for most employers” despite the fact that the measure extended paid sick days to 1.4 million workers. The CEPR report on the successful implementation of paid sick leave in New York comes just two weeks after researchers with the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) found that paid sick leave laws like New York’s may prevent the spread of illnesses such as the flu and significantly improve public health.

Slate reported on CEPR's findings on September 7, mocking conservative critics of the law who worried it would create, as Slate put it, “a labor force of hypochondriac slackers” and drive businesses out of the city. Slate noted that paid sick leave laws had been passed in five states, Washington, D.C., and 26 cities since San Francisco enacted a paid leave mandate in 2007, calling the development “one of American progressives’ greatest policy triumphs.” Slate also noted that New York should be a good testing ground for how paid sick leave can affect economic growth, due to the city’s large size and the similar results found elsewhere by the U.S. Department of Labor. From Slate:

Did a labor force of hypochondriac slackers cause businesses to relocate to Nassau and Westchester Counties? It doesn’t look like it: New York City’s share of metropolitan employment has actually increased, slightly, in the two years since the revised law took effect.

[...]

That jibes with findings from other cities published by the U.S. Department of Labor in October. San Francisco has outperformed surrounding counties in job growth since the passage of its policy in 2007. Likewise, analyses of Seattle and Washington, D.C. found negligible impacts on hiring and business location. A ton of research has also shown that flexible leave policies have a positive effect on worker productivity, happiness, and health.

These findings -- and the report that New York has seen the best job creation in a half-century during Mayor Bill De Blasio’s first two years in office -- offer a stark rebuke to critics of paid leave mandates like Trump economic adviser Stephen Moore. During a January 17, 2014, appearance on Fox News, Moore, who was then a Wall Street Journal editorial board member, blasted New York’s paid sick leave mandate, falsely claiming it would be “very dangerous for cities” if more such laws were enacted.

Moore’s empty criticism echoed other right-wing pundits, who had attacked paid leave as an unwarranted “entitlement” and hyped the supposed costs to businesses while ignoring the benefits for workers. Right-wing media repeatedly push such myths and routinely dismiss the need for such laws as nothing more than part of a “giant welfare giveaway utopia.” The complete failure of this particular right-wing media myth in the face of actual evidence bolsters Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman’s claim that Moore “has a troubled relationship with the facts.” Krugman speculated that in the conservative economic policy climate where Moore has made his career, perhaps his “incompetence is actually desirable” -- after all, a “smart hack might turn honest.”

Just a week after the Associated Press quoted Stephen Moore, an economic adviser to Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, saying Trump’s policy proposals are actually designed to be vague, Moore proclaimed that Trump’s economic plan is the “most detailed” plan from any candidate in decades and may even be “too specific.”

During the September 9 episode of Fox Business’ Varney & Co., host Stuart Varney asked Moore to respond to a September 4 Washington Post editorial titled “Donald Trump’s bet: We are all chumps.” In it, the paper slammed the GOP candidate for his lack of accountability, his penchant for lying, and his refusal to share “basic information” with voters such as medical records, tax returns, and “serious policy proposals.” After opening the segment by suggesting that Trump had “surely released a detailed economic plan, amongst other detailed plans,” Varney ceded the discussion to Moore, who claimed that the Trump campaign has “put forward the most detailed economic plan, I think, of any candidate in 40 years.” Moore went on to claim that Trump’s plan may be “too specific,” and that Trump has “an extremely detailed plan” available to the public on the campaign’s website. From Varney & Co.:

STEPHEN MOORE: But, back to this idea that there's no detailed plan, because I never really answered your question about that. We've put forward the most detailed economic plan, I think, of any candidate in 40 years. I mean, we've got a very detailed tax plan.

You look at his website about how we're going to replace Obamacare, you look at his energy plan -- the media didn't pay any attention to that. We're going to drill for resources, we’re going to put coal miners back into the jobs they lost. I mean, this is a very, very -- in fact, I would say, a lot of our political people say we're being too specific, we're giving too many targets for the, for our opponents to shoot at. Because we have an extremely detailed plan, and anybody who wants to look at it, go to the website, and you're going to see -- you know, compare that with what Bill Clinton or Hillary Clinton has come out with. I mean, Hillary is all bluster. She doesn't have any plan at all.

Moore’s bizarre claim that Trump’s economic plan is “very detailed” and potentially even “too specific” comes just days after an August 29 article from the Associated Press (AP) quoted Moore claiming that Trump’s plans are supposed to be “visionary stuff” and have been left intentionally vague to avoid “a big debate” over small details. From the AP:

But Stephen Moore, a conservative economist who has worked with Trump to shape his tax and economic plans, says the vagueness on Trump's economic policies was by design.

"We want to talk about the big visionary stuff. We don't want to have a big debate about this loophole, that loophole," he said. "This is a campaign, it's not a write-up of a tax bill in the Ways and Means Committee."

Contrary to Moore’s claim that Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton “doesn’t have any plan at all,” the same AP article found that while Trump had “just seven policy proposals on his website, totaling just over 9,000 words,” Clinton’s campaign site outlined 38 specific issues and contained 65 policy papers totaling 112,735 words. CNN’s Reliable Sources examined the AP’s exposé on Trump’s lack of policy specifics on September 4, and host Brian Stelter even tweeted about the sharp difference.

MSNBC host Rachel Maddow ridiculed Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump after a Wall Street Journal survey found not a single former member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) would support his presidency.

Maddow opened the August 25 edition of her program by blasting Trump over a Wall Street Journal survey that revealed that no former CEA members would state support for the GOP nominee. Maddow reported that while this “very diverse group” of 45 economists had served eight different presidents -- including five Republicans -- “the one thing they all have in common is that not a single one of them supports Donald Trump for president.”

According to the Journal, no Democratic or Republican advisers expressed support for Trump. Two former Republican advisers (Matthew Slaughter and Richard Schmalensee) crossed party lines to offer support for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. And two GOP advisers (former Reagan appointees William Poole and Jerry Jordan) even stated their support for Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson over their own party’s nominee. Maddow called the survey result “stunning,” and compared the economists’ “profound rejection” of Trump to being passed over at a dance. Maddow noted that it was like asking someone to dance, “and everybody in the world decides they will never dance again because of you” (emphasis added):

RACHEL MADDOW (HOST): It's one thing to have, you know, some dissident Republicans rejecting a party's presidential nominee. It happens here and there. It happens, to a greater or lesser extent, with almost every nominee from both major parties every election cycle. There's always a dissenter here or there, but when it's everyone alive who has ever worked for any American president as an economic adviser including the last five Republican presidents, and they all reject you. That’s not like, you ask somebody to dance and they say, “no I don't want to dance with you.” That's like, you ask someone to dance and everybody in the world decides they will never dance again because of you. I mean, this is just -- this is profound rejection. I find that just stunning.

During the segment, Maddow also highlighted a bitingly critical indictment of Trump that Harvard economist Martin Feldstein, a former CEA chairman under President Reagan, told to The Wall Street Journal:

“I have known personally every Republican president since Richard Nixon. They all showed a real understanding of economics and international affairs. The same was true of Mitt Romney. Donald Trump does not have that understanding and does not seem to be concerned about it. That alone disqualifies him in my judgement.”

The revelations from the Journal’s survey were also a topic of conversation on the August 26 edition of CNN’s New Day, during which Trump booster Steve Forbes dismissed the revelation and pivoted to highlight the supposed strength of Trump's advisers: Stephen Moore and Larry Kudlow. Moore and Kudlow have been dogged for making inaccurate statements and failed predictions over the years. Moore was accused of having “a troubled relationship with facts” by Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman, who went on to say that Moore may be maintaining a career in conservative economics only because “incompetence is actually desirable at some level” in those circles. Meanwhile, Kudlow recently lectured single parents that they are partly to blame for poverty even though he admitted to having "virtually no knowledge in this field.”

The Journal's failure to find a single Democratic or Republican supporter of Trump among 45 former presidential economic advisers follows an August 22 report from the paper that hundreds of business economists overwhelmingly prefer Clinton as the best candidate on the economy. Clinton received the support of 55 percent of 414 economists surveyed by the National Association of Business Economics (NABE). Trump drew votes from just 14 percent of NABE members, once again registering less support on the economy than Gary Johnson, who garned 15 percent.

The almost complete lack of support for Trump on the economy comes despite months of the GOP nominee being the dominant force in cable news discussions of the economy -- thanks in part to appearing on Fox News’ Hannity 24 times during the first six months of 2016.

Several media outlets highlighted new research that found workers that had access to paid sick leave are less likely to come to work when contagious -- thus slowing the spread of diseases and improving overall public health. While this may seem like an obvious conclusion, right-wing media have criticized paid sick time and other forms of earned leave as unnecessary “giveaways” for low-wage workers.

Donald Trump has allied himself with a cast of characters and hangers-on who, should he win the presidency, would likely have his ear. Below is an updated guide -- first published in May -- to the people the Republican presidential nominee has chosen to surround himself with.

Stephen Bannon

The Trump Connection

Breitbart News chairman Stephen Bannon was named as the chief executive of the Trump campaign.

What You Need To Know

Under Bannon’s leadership, Breitbart News has recently made a “noticeable shift toward embracing ideas on the extremist fringe of the conservative right. Racist ideas. Anti-Muslim and anti-Immigrant ideas,” according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Several anonymous Breitbart staffers alleged that “the company’s top management was allowing Trump to turn Breitbart into his own fan website” and claimed the candidate paid the site in exchange for favorable coverage. (Bannon denied the allegation.)

After news surfaced that then-Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields had allegedly been manhandled by Trump’s campaign manager, Bannon sided with the campaign over his employee, leading to the defection of several staffers.

Several former Bannon employees have spoken out about his hiring by the campaign. Former Breitbart editor at large Ben Shapiro called Bannon a “legitimately sinister figure” who has led Breitbart News to embrace the “white supremacist alt-right.” Former Breitbart News spokesperson Kurt Bardella toldMedia Matters that Bannon is a “pathological liar” whose hiring signals a “dangerous" shift by the campaign.

Kellyanne Conway

The Trump Connection

Kellyanne Conway served as a senior adviser and pollster for the Trump campaign, and was recently named campaign manager.

What You Need To Know

Conway has long been involved in conservative politics, mostly as a pollster working with conservative groups like the NRA, Family Research Council and Republican candidates like Newt Gingrich and Michele Bachmann.

Conway once said that people “don’t want their kids looking at a cartoon with a bunch of lesbian mothers” and suggested the representation of same-sex parents in children’s programming was a “corrupting” influence.” She also once argued that “political correctness” could create a situation where there were “air traffic controllers who don’t speak great English” leading to “two planes crashing in the sky.”

She also argued that “revulsion towards men” is “part and parcel of the feminist movement” and that “baby girls [are] being killed just because they’re girls” in America.

David Bossie

The Trump Connection

Conservative activist David Bossie is taking a leave of absence from his job as president of activist group Citizens United to be the deputy campaign manager for Trump.

What You Need To Know

In 1992, then-President George H.W. Bush condemned Bossie and Citizens United for using what he called “filthy campaign tactics” against the Clintons during the 1992 presidential campaign. Following President Clinton’s election, Bossie used his role as Citizens United’s political director to operate “an information factory” that produced “a steady stream of tips, tidbits, documents, factoids, suspicions, and story ideas for the nation's press and for Republicans on Capitol Hill.”

Following the 1994 congressional elections, Bossie became a top investigator for the House Government and Reform Committee. The committee was involved in investigating Whitewater, the supposed scandal in which the Clintons were accused of profiting from a real estate deal. Numerous Whitewater investigations failed to turn up evidence to charge the Clintons with anything. But Bossie resigned from that position in the wake of a firestorm regarding his role in releasing selectively edited transcripts and video of conversations with Clinton confidant Webster Hubbell, which omitted statements that downplayed alleged wrongdoing by Hillary Clinton. Then-Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich said he was “embarrassed” by “the circus” that went on at the committee.

Bossie returned to Citizens United, where he has been president since 2000. The group’s film Hillary: The Movie prompted the Supreme Court case Citizens United v. FEC, which resulted in the 5-4 decision that has led to nearly unlimited campaign spending in elections.

More recently, Citizens United has been pushing for the release of Hillary Clinton’s communications from the State Department when she was secretary of state, and the organization is a party in several lawsuits demanding Clinton-related materials from the agency. In the course of making those requests, Citizens United has often insinuated -- without evidence -- that wrongdoing took place. Bossie’s deceptive work is frequently cited in major media outlets.

Paul Manafort

The Trump Connection

Republican strategist Paul Manafort was hired by Trump as a senior aide to his political campaign. Manafort was later promoted to campaign chairman and chief strategist.

What You Need To Know

Manafort was partners with Roger Stone in the lobbying and consulting firm Black, Manafort, Stone and Kelly. After a congressional investigation, Manafort admitted that the work he performed after receiving consulting fees was “influence peddling.”

Manafort and his firms have worked with several unsavory clients including “a business group tied to Ferdinand Marcos, the dictator of the Philippines; Viktor Yanukovych, the ousted Ukrainian president and ally of Vladimir Putin; and Lynden Pindling, the former Bahamian prime minister who was accused of ties to drug traffickers.”

During the Republican primaries, Manafort accused Sen. Ted Cruz’s campaign of engaging in “Gestapo tactics” in order to win over convention delegates.

Manafort’s consulting work on behalf of a Ukrainian political party has come under scrutiny as a result of his role in the Trump campaign.

The Associated Press reported that Manafort “helped a pro-Russian governing party in Ukraine secretly route at least $2.2 million in payments to two prominent Washington lobbying firms in 2012, and did so in a way that effectively obscured the foreign political party's efforts to influence U.S. policy.”

The New York Timesreported that “handwritten ledgers show $12.7 million in undisclosed cash payments designated for Mr. Manafort” by the pro-Russian political party he consulted for in Ukraine.

Roger Stone

The Trump Connection

Republican dirty trickster Roger Stone is a longtime Trump ally. Stone worked on his campaign until August of 2015, continues to serve as a prominent advocate for Trump’s candidacy, and regularly speaks with Trump, including recommending top aide Paul Manafort to the campaign.

What You Need To Know

In addition to his political dirty tricks, Stone has an extensive history of violent, racist, and sexist comments. He started an anti-Hillary Clinton group in 2008 with the acronym “C.U.N.T.,” and has called for her to be executed. He called cable news commentators a “stupid negro” and “Mandingo,” and he promotes conspiracy theories about the Clinton and Bush families murdering dozens of people. His next book is about how the Clintons purportedly murdered JFK Jr. “because he was in the way.”

Stone’s racist and sexist tweets resulted in him being banned from appearing on CNN and MSNBC.

While advocating for Trump, Stone has peddled several outlandish conspiracy theories. He accused the Clintons of murdering several more people, argued that the 2016 election will be “rigged” via the manipulation of voting machines, and alleged that a top Clinton campaign aide was connected to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Stone also attacked the family of Captain Humayun Khan, who was killed in Iraq in 2004.

Alex Jones

The Trump Connection

Conspiracy theorist radio host Alex Jones has been one of Trump’s loudest and most passionate supporters. And the feeling is apparently mutual. In addition to promoting Trump on his show incessantly, Jones hosted Trump for an interview, praised him as a “George Washington” figure, and encouraged listeners to donate to his campaign. (During the appearance, Trump praised Jones for his “amazing” reputation and promised, “I will not let you down.”) Trump confidant Roger Stone has also become a regular on Jones’ show, and the two worked together to organize protests on Trump’s behalf at the Republican convention. After Trump essentially clinched the nomination, Stone went on Jones’ show and toldthe host, “Trump himself told me that he has seen so many of your supporters and listeners at his rallies,” adding, “I’m certain that he is grateful for your support.”

What You Need To Know

Alex Jones is a self-described “founding father” of the “9/11 truth movement” who believes that the terrorist attacks were a “false flag.” Jones also has promoted conspiracy theories alleging that events like the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting, the Boston Marathon bombing, and the Aurora movie theater shooting were all government-orchestrated attacks.

Jones publicly asked Trump to raise the conspiracy of the general election being “rigged,” which the candidate did days later. He praised Trump as being “totally synced” with the conspiracy theory movement and said it is “surreal to talk about issues here on air and then word-for-word hear Trump say it two days later.”

General Michael Flynn

The Trump Connection

Retired Army Lt. General Michael Flynn, former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, is reportedly “a trusted Trump adviser and go-to man on intelligence and national security.”

What You Need To Know

Flynn was forced out of his position in 2014 after clashing with senior officials. He has complained that “‘political correctness’ has prevented the U.S. from confronting violent extremism, which he sees as a ‘cancerous idea that exists inside of the Islamic religion.’” Flynn accusesthe U.S. government of concealing “the actions of terrorists like bin Laden and groups like ISIS, and the role of Iran in the rise of radical Islam.”

Flynn has publicly supported Trump’s idea that the families of terrorist suspects should be killed, and he also backs Trump’s proposal for a ban on Muslim travel to the United States. Flynn has written that “fear of Muslims is RATIONAL.”

In 2015, Flynn flew to Moscow and was filmed having a formal dinner with Vladimir Putin. The Daily Beast reported that “Pentagon brass were taken by surprise that he didn’t notify the department.”

Flynn was paid by the state-funded Russian television network RT for his appearance at the network’s anniversary gala.

Flynn spoke on Trump’s behalf at the Republican National Convention, saying that “war is not about bathrooms” in reference to controversy over anti-transgender laws. He also retweeted an anti-Semitic pro-Trump message which read in part, “Not anymore, Jews. Not anymore.” He later described the incident as “a mistake.”

Rudy Giuliani

The Trump Connection

Trump told Fox News that former New York City mayor and failed presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani might be his choice to head up a commission to review his proposal for a temporary Muslim ban.

What You Need To Know

Giuliani has a long history of anti-Muslim comments and statements. He argued in favor of Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-TX) idea that one way to fight terrorism is to “patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods,” said sexual assault in Germany proved that “these [Syrian] refugees are inherently a problem,” and praised Rep. Peter King (R-NY) for holding anti-Muslim hearings in Congress.

Speaking before Trump at a campaign rally, Giuliani said, “Under those eight years before Obama came along, we didn’t have any successful radical Islamic terrorist attack in the United States,” omitting the September 11, 2001, attacks. PolitiFact rated this claim “false.”

Ed Klein

The Trump Connection

Disgraced journalist Ed Klein said he has known Trump for 35 years and claimed, “I understand him better than most people outside his immediate family.” Klein recently had lunch with Trump as he campaigned in Indiana. Trump has repeatedly promoted Klein’s books on his Twitter account.

What You Need To Know

Journalists have described Klein’s columns and books attacking the Clintons and Obamas as “fan fiction” and “smut.” He has launched numerous unfounded smears, including the claim that Chelsea Clinton was conceived when Bill Clinton raped Hillary (he later walked back the allegation). Publisher HarperCollins reportedly dropped Klein’s Blood Feud because it “did not pass a vetting by in-house lawyers.” Klein has repeatedly distorted quotes in his work, and even conservative figures have expressed skepticism about the veracity of his reporting.

Jeffrey Lord

The Trump Connection

Lord, a contributor to the conservative American Spectator, has been a big booster of Trump’s candidacy. CNN hired Lord to present a pro-Trump point of view. According to Lord, Trump helped land him the gig. ThePatriot-News reported last year, “Lord said Trump complained to CNN execs that the network only featured commentators who didn't get him, so CNN asked The Donald who in the world of conservative media he would suggest, and he said Jeffrey Lord.”

What You Need To Know

Lord infamously tried to prove that a black man who was beaten to death was not technically lynched, a position that was even condemned by his colleagues at the Spectator. During his CNN appearances, Lord has defended Trump’s attack on Mexican immigrants as criminals and rapists, excused Trump’s failure to disavow the KKK, and described the Klan as a “leftist terrorist organization.”

Lord blamed the pro-choice movement for gun violence and attacked the family of deceased Army Captain Humayun Khan for speaking at the Democratic National Convention. He also echoed the Trump campaign by promoting the conspiracy theory that the election “could be stolen.”

Ben Carson

The Trump Connection

Carson endorsed Trump after he dropped his presidential bid and was then tasked with being Trump’s liaison between his campaign and Speaker Paul Ryan. Carson also apparently had some role in Trump’s vice presidential selection team.

What You Need To Know

Carson has caused controversy with a series of bizarre and offensive comments as an author, a Fox News contributor, and during his short-lived presidential campaign. During a Fox News appearance, Carson infamously compared marriage equality supporters to those who would advocate bestiality and pedophilia, and argued in his 2012 book that marriage equality could destroy America “like the fall of the Roman Empire.” Carson also claimed that the Egyptian pyramids were built to store grain, said being gay was a “choice,”described Obamacare as “the worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery,” and argued that Jewish people could have prevented the Holocaust if they had guns.

Speaking on stage at the Republican National Convention, Carson compared Hillary Clinton to “Lucifer.”

Michael Savage

The Trump Connection

Radio host Michael Savage was an early backer of Trump in the conservative media who has describedhimself as “the architect of Trump’s messaging." Trump has appeared on his program multipletimes -- in one appearance, Savage offered himself up to head the National Institutes of Health (NIH), a suggestion that Trump described as “common sense.”

What You Need To Know

Savage has a long history of outrageous and violent rhetoric. In 2008, he warned, “I fear that Obama will stir up a race war … in order to seize absolute power.”

Savage also claimed that President Obama “wants to infect the nation with Ebola” and is gearing up the government to “fight a war against white people.” Savage accused Obama of engaging in “genocide” against the white race.

Additionally, Savage has called for a “revolution” in response to multiculturalism, said “I’d hang every lawyer who went down toto Guantanamo” Bay, accused President Obama of being the “new Mao,” theorized that Democrats would declare martial law, and said “the radical left and the radical Muslims are natural blood brothers.”

Savage and Trump swapped notes on the conspiracy theory that Justice Antonin Scalia was murdered.

Coulter has developed a reputation over the years for making hateful and disgusting public comments, often with a bigoted message that even conservatives have recoiled from. The conservative National Review dropped her column when, after 9/11, she said America should “invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.”

Coulter’s book was apparently modeled on the rhetoric of white nationalists and other anti-immigrant extremists, and she credited white nationalist Peter Brimelow as an “intellectual influence” on her work.

While defending Trump, Coulter called South Carolina-born Governor Nikki Haley an “immigrant” who “does not understand America’s history,” and made derogatory attacks on Jews while complaining about Trump’s rivals in a primary debate.

She has also regularly offered bigoted anti-immigrant rhetoric, including suggesting that immigrants are more dangerous than ISIS and that “‘real’ Hispanics are on welfare.”

Laura Ingraham

The Trump Connection

Radio host Laura Ingraham has been a staunchsupporter of Trump’s candidacy and has praised his anti-immigrant rhetoric. She once compared Trump to Abraham Lincoln.

What You Need To Know

Ingraham has often used her show to demonize and attack immigrants. Ingraham said Mexicans “have come here to murder and rape our people,” called the children of undocumented immigrants “anchor fetuses,” andsuggested that deported immigrants attempting to re-enter the country should be “shot.”

Chris Christie

The Trump Connection

New Jersey governor Chris Christie endorsed Trump after he dropped out of the campaign and has served as a leading surrogate for the candidate

What You Need To Know

Christie has become infamous for his public arguments with voters and other figures. He told a critical voter he was “a real big shot shooting your mouth off,” called a reporter “a complete idiot,” and told a resident asking about stalled rebuilding efforts after Superstorm Sandy to “sit down and shut up.”

In addition to his demeanor, Christie’s administration was involved in the Bridgegate scandal, where his subordinates conspired to block traffic on the George Washington Bridge as payback for political slights against the governor.

Larry Kudlow

The Trump Connection

Larry Kudlow was part of the Office of Management and Budget in Reagan’s first term, and is now a columnist and on-air personality for CNBC. Trump enlisted Kudlow (along with Stephen Moore) to work on changes to his economic plans.

What You Need To Know

Kudlow was a big supporter of George W. Bush’s economic policies and was infamous for missing the warning signs of the coming economic meltdown.

Kudlow dismissed people concerned about the real estate bubble in the mid-2000s as “bubbleheads who expect housing-price crashes.” In December 2007, as the National Bureau of Economic Research marked the beginning of the Great Recession, Kudlow wrote, “there’s no recession coming.”

Stephen Moore

The Trump Connection

Conservative economic columnist Stephen Moore was enlisted, along with Larry Kudlow, to tweak Trump’s economic policy in the general election.

What You Need To Know

Like Kudlow, Moore has a terrible track record when predicting the effect of both conservative and progressive policies on the economy. He also regularly makes false claims to attack policies like taxes, regulation, the minimum wage, and Obamacare.

The editorial page director of the Kansas City Stardeclared she “won’t be running anything else from Stephen Moore” after he used false employment numbers in a column attacking economist Paul Krugman.

In a column promoting Trump's candidacy, Moore wrote, "It is striking that Trump is the anti-Obama in every way."

Scottie Nell Hughes

The Trump Connection

Scottie Nell Hughes is a cable news pundit and CNN contributor who has often spoken in defense of Donald Trump. Glamournotesshe “has been on the front line for Trump campaign since she introduced him at a September mega rally in Dallas.”

What You Need To Know

Hughes was previously the news director for the “Tea Party News Network.” She uses odd logic to launch defenses of Trump’s actions.

When some called for riots at the Republican convention in defense of Trump, Hughes told CNN “it’s not riots as in a negative thing.” Hughes said that Trump’s statement that women should be punished for abortions had been “misconstrued,” and that the media paying attention to Trump’s sexist tweets is unfair.

Hughes lamented that Democratic vice-presidential nominee Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) uses Spanish in his speeches, saying, “I’m hoping I’m not going to have to kind of start brushing up back on my Dora the Explorer to understand some of the speeches given” during the Democratic convention.

She also claimed that Hillary Clinton’s presidential nomination is “tearing down men.”

Pat Caddell

The Trump Connection

Caddell has reportedly been “speaking regularly” with campaign chief executive Stephen Bannon about “what Trump could do in the coming weeks to expand his appeal, in particular with Democrats and independents.”

What You Need To Know

Caddell worked for President Jimmy Carter, but, as the Washington Post notes, his "ties to the Democratic Party have frayed in recent decades as he has become a well-known face on Fox News and more closely associated with independent candidates.”

Caddell has been a frequent guest on Breitbart News’ radio show, Breitbart News Daily, where he has engaged in conspiracy theories about polls being skewed against Donald Trump, and described the Obama White House as “Nixon on steroids.”

Caddell also said reporters were supposedly making themselves “the enemies of the American people” for exhibiting bias against Trump. As the Post pointed out, Caddell’s commentary has regularly been promoted by Breitbart News.

Foryears, Caddell’s commentary has often aligned far more with his conservative Fox News colleagues than anyone purporting to be a Democrat. (In one 2011 Fox Business appearance, he described the Democrats as being his “former” party.)

In 2010, along with Doug Schoen, Caddell wrote an op-ed calling on President Obama not to seek a second term and argued, “The president has largely lost the consent of the governed.”

Journalists and economic experts ridiculed Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s 13-person economic advisory team, which was comprised entirely of white men and featured only two individuals with more than an undergraduate background in economics. Trump released the list in anticipation of a policy speech to be delivered at the Detroit Economic Club on August 8.

While GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump recently suggested that voters should be allowed to ban fracking at a local or state level, one of Trump’s economic advisers believes that “to be against fracking is like being against a cure for cancer.”

During the August 1 edition of C-SPAN2's Book TV, while discussing his new book Fueling Freedom: Exposing the Mad War on Energy, conservative economist Stephen Moore stated that opposing fracking “is like being against a cure for cancer” because it is “one of the great seismic technological breakthroughs” that is “giving us huge amounts of energy at very low prices.” He criticized Florida high school students who oppose fracking, claiming they were “indoctrinated in their high school classes” to think that “somehow fracking is a bad thing.”

Moore also dismissed the widespread concerns about fracking contaminating drinking water supplies by claiming that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) “said there were no findings of water contamination from fracking.” But the EPA’s report actually found multiple instances of water contamination from fracking, and that the EPA itself emphasized that its data was “insufficient” to evaluate how often fracking impacts water “with any certainty,” leading its own scientists to call its conclusions into question.

Days before C-SPAN2 aired the discussion, Trump told a local Denver television station that “voters should have a say" in whether to allow fracking, adding, "[I]f a municipality or a state wants to ban fracking I can understand that.” Many towns in Colorado have placed local bans or moratoriums on fracking, and Democrats are currently working to place an initiative for a statewide ban on fracking on the November ballot, the Los Angeles Timesreported.

Moore is reportedly one of Trump's "council of wise men" and a campaign adviser, who was picked by Trump, along with CNBC contributor Larry Kudlow, to re-write his tax plan. Moore, who is also a Fox News contributor and senior economist at the fossil fuel-funded Heritage Foundation, has compared fracking to a cancer cure in the past, and has also distorted a NASA study to claim that it was an "indication" that global warming is "actually not happening."

From the August 1 edition of C-SPAN2's Book TV:

STEPHEN MOORE: How many of you have seen that video from Gasland where the West Virginia -- they light the big lighter near the water and it looks like -- I'm sure you've seen that, it looks like a blowtorch -- and I remember when that came out, when did that come out? Four or five years ago or something like that? And I remember we went to West Virginia to give a talk about energy policy, and I was talking to these folks about it and I mentioned the Gasland scene, and these people burst out laughing, they were like, "This has been happening for 75 years in West Virginia." ... So the point is, that's not fracking. This is just a perfect example of a propaganda campaign that's going on. It's not fracking, it's natural seepage of that, just as you're describing, it seeps up into the -- so, if that being the case, how do you prevent it from getting into the drinking water? You actually drill it out. If you drill it out, it's less likely to contaminate drinking water. The EPA -- correct me if I'm wrong on this, you're the expert -- but, was it about a year or so ago, the EPA said there were no findings of water contamination from fracking. I've got to say, this is an amazing thing that's going on in this country. I gave a talk two years ago to the valedictorians, high school valedictorians of Florida. And there were about 50 of these kids, and they were incredibly impressive and bright and smart and they were inquisitive and so on. And I remember during my little talk to them -- I gave two or three minutes about this energy stuff and how great this is -- and I remember they started to frown. And I said, "Gee, this is kind of weird." And then all of a sudden I said, "Wait a minute. Wait, wait wait. How many of you in this room, of you 50 kids, how many of you think fracking is a good thing?" About 12 of them raised their hands. "How many of you think fracking is a bad thing?" Thirty of them raised their hands. Now, look, to be against fracking is like being against a cure for cancer. This is one of the great seismic technological breakthroughs. We're way ahead of the rest of the world. It's giving us access to huge amounts of energy at very low prices. How could anybody be against this? And it occurred to me, these kids have been indoctrinated in their high school classes that somehow fracking is a bad thing. And this is a tough thing to defeat, this kind of wacko propaganda campaign that infiltrates every area of our culture.

Economic adviser to the Trump campaign Stephen Moore responded to critiques of Trump’s published tax plan by underscoring that the campaign’s plan is not “even finalized,” while still pushing a series of confusing claims about the revised plan’s specifics. Moore assured Fox Business’ Charles Payne, however, that he would “love” the new plan.

Moore, a conservative economist and Fox contributor, appeared on the July 15 edition of Fox Business’ Cavuto: Coast to Coast to discuss criticisms of presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump’s tax proposals, which were first rolled out in September and are still currently detailed on the campaign’s website. Moore’s defenses of the plan largely consisted of repeating the Trump talking point that the plan is currently being “revised” and “finalized.” Protesting critiques of the Trump tax plan already made public, Moore complained “it’s like declaring the New York Yankees the winner in a game after the fifth inning -- I mean, the game isn’t over yet because we haven’t put [the plan] together.”

Payne and Moore rehashed that Donald Trump would be “hands off” on entitlements and is not interested in cutting “social security, medicare.” Payne then claimed Trump “is going to double the size of the military” -- an assertion Moore was unsure about. Moore claimed the Trump tax plan would stimulate the economy “from 2 percent growth to 4 percent” by slashing taxes and that these tax cuts will be paid for by that growth and by cutting federal spending dramatically:

Moore argued that economists and critics pointing out that the numbers of the current plan don’t add up “don’t know what they are talking about,” because it is being revised. The plan, as it stands now, has been panned by economists.

Moore’s claim that tax cuts will be balanced by cuts in spending do not, in fact, add up: The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center (TPC) and the conservative Tax Foundation each scored the current tax plan and found that that it would explode the deficit by $9 to $12 trillion over the next decade, on top of the $9.4 trillion in projected deficits at current spending levels. Trump would need to cut almost one trillion dollars in federal spending per year, which is more than all non-military discretionary spending.

The Tax Foundation’s analysis concluded that Trump’s current tax plan would boost investment and wage growth while creating up to 5.3 million new jobs, but those figures relied on a so-called “dynamic” scoring model that has been criticized for overestimating the stimulative value of tax cuts. According to a September 2014 report from the Brookings Institution, tax cuts do not necessarily create economic growth and they can even discourage growth by undermining economic incentives to invest. A September 2012 report from the Congressional Research Service (CRS), which was suppressed by Senate Republicans, similarly found no correlation between tax cuts and economic growth, but it did caution that tax cuts for high-income individuals “appear to be associated” with rising inequality.

Moore has a long and well-documented history of distorting facts on the economy. Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, who has spent years documenting Moore's repeated failures in economic policy, recently slammed the right-wing commentator’s "impressive lack of even minimal technical competence" upon learning the economist would be involved in re-working Trump’s tax proposals.

Right-wing economic pundits Larry Kudlow and Stephen Moore claimed that Bill and Hillary Clinton are partly to blame for the housing crisis that rocked the economy during the Bush administration because of their support of the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), a program intended to expand American home ownership. Kudlow and Moore, who both have served as economic policy advisers to presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, pushed this repeatedly debunked myth while attempting to deflect attention from Trump's 2006 statement relishing the potential profits he could reap during a housing and financial crisis.

Kudlow and Moore falsely claimed Hillary Clinton was partly responsible for the housing crash in a May 29 op-ed in The Washington Times, adding that she has no right to lambast Trump for stating in 2006 that he had hoped the housing market crashes so he could buy properties cheaply. Trump has faced continued scrutiny over this statement. New York magazine even called it “a new, lurid reason why he should never be president” and media interest only grew after Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) called the GOP front-runner “a small insecure money grubber who doesn’t care who gets hurt so long as he makes money off it.” From Kudlow and Moore’s Washington Times piece:

It turns out that Donald Trump has been very good at buying low and selling high, and it helps account for his amazing business success.

Now Hillary Clinton seems to think it’s a crime. Campaigning in California last week she’s wailed that Mr. Trump “actually said he was hoping for the crash that caused hard working families in California and across America to lose their homes, all because he thought he could take advantage of it to make some money for himself.” She’s assailing Mr. Trump for being a good businessman — something she would know almost nothing about because she’s never actually run a business, though she did miraculously turn $1,000 into $1 million in the cattle futures market many years ago.

[...]

What is so hypocritical about the Clinton attacks is that it wasn’t Trump, but Hillary, her husband, and many of her biggest supporters who were the real culprits here.

Kudlow and Moore’s anti-Clinton attack is based on their claim that expanding access to mortgages to help low-income Americans buy homes was part of the catalyst for the housing crisis. The two also claimed that then-Sen. Hillary Clinton “went to bat for the housing industry” -- ignoring that Clinton actually pushed for tougher regulations on the financial industry in 2007.

Top economists reject the idea that President Clinton and his policies are to blame for the financial crisis -- including the current and former Federal Reserve chairs from Republican and Democratic administrations. Former Fed chairman Ben Bernanke disputed this myth in a November 2008 statement demonstrating that after studying the CRA for over 30 years the Federal Reserve's findings “runs counter to the charge that CRA was at the root of ... current mortgage difficulties." Current Federal Reserve chairwoman Janet Yellen found that the CRA did not cause problems but instead the CRA increased “responsible lending” in a March 2008 speech when she was the president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.

Kudlow and Moore have a long and well-documented history of distorting facts on the economy. Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, who has spent years documenting Moore's repeated failures in economic policy, recently slammed the right-wing commentator’s "impressive lack of even minimal technical competence." Kudlow has made many statements berating Americans and even lectured single parents about poverty at an appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) -- even though he admitted to having "virtually no knowledge in this field."

Conservative economist Stephen Moore lambasted President Obama’s performance on the economy -- claiming the Obama administration accumulated too much debt and generated too little economic growth -- in an op-ed championing Donald Trump’s plan to cut taxes for the wealthy and corporations, which will drive up even more debt and is virtually guaranteed not to grow the economy.

Moore claimed in a May 10 op-ed published by USA Today that Donald Trump's tax plan is "designed to supercharge growth" and break with years of supposedly lackluster "Obamanomics." He chided Obama for presiding over "the weakest economic recovery in 75 years" and accumulating "almost $8 trillion" in national debt, even though the annual deficit has actually been decreasing since 2011, the unemployment rate has been cut in half since the president’s first year in office, and the economy has created 14.2 million jobs since the labor market bottomed out in early 2010. From USA Today:

It’s no mystery why. Obamanomics has given us the weakest economic recovery in 75 years. Wages are flat or falling for all but those in the top 10%. And our national debt has risen by almost $8 trillion in seven years.

[...]

The Trump tax plan is designed to supercharge growth, much like President Kennedy did in the 1960s and President Reagan did in the boom years of the 1980s with their tax reductions.

[...]

The biggest deficit we need to urgently fix is our growth deficit. We must pump up our GDP growth from the anemic 1% rate of Obama’s past six months up to a sustained 4% under Trump. Just 2% faster growth reduces our budget deficit over a decade by more than $5 trillion.

Liberal economists pout that this growth is impossible for America, but that’s what people said in the miserable 1970s. Reagan (and JFK before him) proved that with the right policy incentives that get government off the back of business, a new era of prosperity is just around the corner.

Moore advocated for Trump’s tax plan as an alternative to Obama’s economic record, a plan that even the most generous estimates show will produce larger budget deficits and greater debt accumulation than witnessed during the Obama administration. The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center (TPC) and the conservative Tax Foundation each scored Trump’s tax plan and found that it would explode the deficit by $9 to $12 trillion over the next decade, on top of $9.4 trillion in projected deficits at current spending levels. The Tax Foundation’s analysis further claimed that Trump’s tax plan would boost investment and wage growth while creating up to 5.3 million new jobs, but those figures come from a so-called “dynamic” scoring model that has been criticized for overestimating the stimulative value of tax cuts.

Moore’s claim that Trump’s tax plan would create 4 percent economic growth is reminiscent of claims by failed Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush, which experts quickly dismissed as “nonsense” and “wizardry.” According to a September 2014 report from the Brookings Institution, tax cuts do not necessarily create economic growth and they can even discourage growth by undermining economic incentives to invest. A September 2012 report from the Congressional Research Service (CRS), which was suppressed by Senate Republicans, similarly found no correlation between tax cuts and economic growth, but it did caution that tax cuts for high-income individuals “appear to be associated” with rising inequality.

Moore has a long and well-documented history of distorting facts on the economy. Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, who has spent years documenting Moore's repeated failures in economic policy, recently slammed the right-wing commentator’s "impressive lack of even minimal technical competence."

Right-wing media outlets are parroting the attacks of an anti-LGBTQ hate group on Connecticut’s openly gay comptroller, Kevin Lembo. Lembo recently sent the American Family Association (AFA) a letter asking the group to submit written documentation certifying it complies with the nondiscrimination regulations governing the Connecticut State Employee Campaign for Charitable Giving (CSEC), which allows Connecticut State employees to contribute to qualifying non-profit charities through payroll deductions. Lembo’s office has since been “flooded” with emails and phone calls from AFA supporters.